The Secret Thoughts of a Weasley Matriarch
by evergreeneyes
Summary: The ten things you never knew about Molly Weasley. Canon, and set after the epilogue. Just a little one-shot.


Ten Things You Never Knew About Molly Weasley

The worst moment of her life was seeing the rows of bodies in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. As she mourned her son, she looked at the faces of the fallen and saw how may of the heroes were _just children_. Then it wasn't only Fred's death which caused the tears to roll down her cheeks, as the grief she felt at her own loss was, for a moment, magnified fifty times as she felt the pain of those parents, too.

After the Battle of Hogwarts, many kind people tried to comfort her with the pseudo-meaningful "it will get better with time". She felt like dicing every single one of them into miniscule pieces and feeding them to a hippogriff. She'd been through it before, and she knew that, as much as people wished it to be, that just wasn't true. Even now, so many years later, she misses Fred, and Gideon and Fabian, just as much as the day they died. It never got better, she just got used to it.

After the incident with Fleur, in which she believed the girl would be superficial and heartless simply because she was beautiful, she always tried very hard not to judge people by their appearance. Because of this, she was very proud of herself for that Sunday lunchtime when Scorpius Malfoy had visited the Burrow, and she was the only member of the two older generations who could look him straight in the grey eyes and blond hair without once flinching, or looking away, or tensing her shoulders, or glaring at the memory of what other bearers of the trademark Malfoy features had done.

She used to hate her red hair, because she was the only member of the Prewett family to be 'afflicted' by such a hair colour, and her brothers teased her mercilessly. They could often be found jeering that it "looked as though her head were on fire" and other such nonsense. She even once had an elderly and somewhat bitter neighbour inform her that it was "the hair colour of hussies". Then, in her sixth year, she started to realise that perhaps she liked Arthur as more than a friend, and he realised it too, and when she went home with him to meet his parents, she decided her hair was her favourite thing in the world, because in her mind it marked her out as perfect to join the Weasley family. Later, she liked it even more, because it easily identified her as the mother of her perfect, _redheaded_ babies.

She loved all of her children, and while she was very proud of the qualities they all shared (kindness, intelligence … she could go on, and frequently did) what she was always most amazed by was their sheer uniqueness - how every one of them was completely different , even though they had the same genes. This is why she always detested Fred and George being referred to as "the twins", always mentioned as a unit, and why it took her a long time to forgive the friend who, after Fred's untimely death, said "At least you still have George. It's like Fred's still there, in a way, isn't it?" Because it wasn't like that at all - just because they were identical, and best friends, and frequently finished each other's sentences, they were not just two parts of the same person. Their personalities were distinct, even if other never seemed to notice that.

Molly thought that perhaps the most unique of her children was Percy. In his relentless conquest to be _normal_, to be as boring and un-Weasley-like as it was possible to be, he made himself drastically different from his siblings. She often wondered at the irony, for it was this desire to _not_ be like them, which, in a way, made himjust like them.

The biggest party she ever threw was held on August 11th, 1998, just over three months after Voldemort's last great massacre. It was Ginny's seventeenth birthday, and Molly was not going to let her only daughter slip into adulthood quietly, as the family continued to weep for their lost brother, son, friend. She had to celebrate the children she had left, and after all, Fred himself was a great believer in laughter as the most powerful healer of them all. Despite the fireworks, and the feast, and the music and dancing and all of her best efforts, there still wasn't much laughing, though. But there was some, and it was a start.

She was very proud that all of her children were Sorted into Gryffindor, but she was also proud that she had grandchildren in every house at Hogwarts. When people heard of a Weasley or Potter in another house, and, more shocking yet, friends with a Malfoy or Nott, it changed their perceptions and planted the seed of an idea that, perhaps, you could not judge someone by their school house. After all, wasn't equality what they had all been fighting for, what people had _died_ for? Not just equality for muggleborns and centaurs and werewolves, but for everyone, so that when people read 'Gryffindor - bold', they would not read 'mudbloods and blood traitors', 'Slytherin - cunning' would not be taken as 'evil', and even Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw would be appreciated for their caring and wit, rather than assumed stupid and haughty, respectively.

Which is why, although she loved all of her grandchildren completely, she sometimes thought that Rose was her favourite. She can't say that she wasn't surprised, and perhaps, if she is completely honest, a little concerned when Rose was Sorted into Slytherin, even more so because she was the first of her grandchildren not to be in Gryffindor, and she was downright shocked when Rose obstinately informed her that she had _asked_ to be in Slytherin. Surely she had wanted to be in Gryffindor? But Rose, who was the spitting image of Ron, furrowed her brow and explained "Of course I wanted to play with the same chess set that Dad and Uncle Harry used to, and sleep in the same rooms as Mum did, and sneak out with Al after curfew, but … I wanted to change the world more. I wanted to make everyone realise that just because you're in Slytherin, it doesn't make you evil. That kind of prejudice is just archaic and ignorant!" In that moment, as Rose fumed with righteous indignation, Molly thought the child had never looked more like her mother.

For a long time she wasn't sure she liked her grandchildren being named after war heroes. In her mind, there should have been new names chosen for a new age, free from the fears of the previous one. Besides, there had already been a Fred Weasley and James Potter, already a Nymphadora (Rose's middle name) and an Alastair (Fred's). The dead deserved to keep their names for themselves, because she liked to think they were still out there somewhere, in another place and time. But then Percy named his daughter after her, and Molly realised that the dead, like she was, would be honoured to have a part of this new world named after them.

**A/N:**** So, these ideas just wandered into my head, and I adore Molly Weasley :D**

**I hope you enjoyed it!**

**Some things for you to do if you're bored :**

**1) Review …**

**2) Check out the poll on my profile …**

**3) Have a go at a one-shot challenge I've set up. The pairing is Hermione/anyone, so you can pick and choose practically anything you want to do! The link to the forum, with more details, is on my profile. It closes 1****st**** September - I look forward to reading any entries :D**


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